Thursday, December 15, 2011

THE HAGUE (EJP)---Holland will "thoroughly review" its policy on the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal told the parliament in The Hague.

The Dutch ruling party called UNRWA’s definitions "worrisome." Holland is UNRWA’s 6th largest donor, with an annual contribution of roughly 30 million dollars.

Rosenthal announced the review in reply to a question by the speaker of his own faction, the Liberal VVD.

"UNRWA uses its own unique definition of refugees, different to the UN’s. The refugee issue is a big obstacle for peace. We therefore ask the government acknowledge this discrepancy, which leads to the third-generation Palestinian refugees," VVD speaker Hans Ten Broeke said.

Minister Uri Rosenthal promised to "thoroughly review the subject and adopt a balanced resolution on it." He added: "I understand many involved parties regard UNRWA’s approach as highly important as it helps clarify matters and bring them into focus."

The minister’s position is expected to be submitted in the coming weeks in a letter to parliament.

UNRWA was set up in 1949 by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as an independent body entrusted with caring for Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in the years 1946-1949. Unlike UNHCR, UNRWA extends the definition of refugee also to descendants.

According to UNRWA, there are approximately five million Palestinian refugees worldwide.

Last year Canada stopped its core funding of roughly 10 million dollars annually for UNRWA. In 2011 UNRWA enjoyed a budget of 1.23 billion dollars, roughly half of it provided by the U.S and the European Commission – its two largest donors, followed by Sweden, Britain and Norway.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

US presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich ...said the Palestinian Arabs were 'an invented people' - and the world promptly started hurling execrations at him, as if such a statement proved beyond doubt that Gingrich was indeed a dangerously extreme individual who, when it came to political positioning, was just off the graph altogether.

' "Remember, there was no Palestine as a state - (it was) part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places..." '

But of course, he is absolutely correct. As Elder of Ziyon pointed out, the Arabs who lived in Palestine were a disconnected bunch of tribes who had nothing in common with each other except that they were Arabs. They never were, are not and never will be a Palestinian people (the claim that they are now just because they say they are is risible and would be dismissed out of hand if applied to any other self-defined grouping). There is not and never has been any 'Palestinian' Arab culture, language, religion or national identity separate from that of the wider Arab nation.

'Palestinianism' was invented solely to destroy Israel. The one and only characteristic of this 'national' identity is the aim of destroying another -- authentic -- national identity.

The Arabs have themselves repeatedly admitted this over the years.Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, the Syrian Arab leader told the British Peel Commission in 1937:

"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it."

At the United Nations in 1956, the Saudi representative stated:

"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria."

And after the 1967 war Zuheir Muhsin, then military commander of the PLO and member of the PLO Executive Council, said helpfully:

"There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity... yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel."

The agenda of 'Palestinian rights' is, however, now so deeply rooted in western discourse and diplomacy - and even in Israeli leftist discourse - that Gingrich has found himself under attack for talking rubbish. But it is his attackers whose arguments are jaw-droppingly absurd.

For example, a Fatah Revolutionary Council member claimed that Gingrich was 'racist' and 'ignorant' because the Palestinians had descended from the 'Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites'. But as Elder of Ziyon comments in a further hilarious posting, there are one or two, ah, obstacles in the way of this particular claim:

'The only confirmed mention of the historic Jebusites is in the Hebrew Bible. That's the only source that says that the Jebusites lived around Jerusalem. This exact same source says that one of their leaders, Araunah, offered to give the Temple Mount to King David; David insisted that he pay for it, and he did - for the amount of fifty silver shekels. So if you believe that the Palestinian Arabs are actually Jebusites, you must believe that they sold the Temple Mount to the Jews in a legal transaction.

'... There is another problem, though. The Constitution of Palestine refers numerous times to the "Arab Palestinian people" and that "Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation." The PLO Charter similarly states "Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation."

'But Jebusites were not Arabs. They were not even Semites! No self-respecting Jebusite (if any had still existed) would identify with the Arab hordes who overran his homeland in the seventh century. He would probably want to behead the infidel invaders.

'Is the constitution and charter wrong? When they call themselves Arab, are they all lying? Perhaps "Palestine" should quit the Arab League and re-assert its nebulous Jebusite ancestry.'

'"There is no intelligent person today who argues about the existence of the Palestinian people," Segev said. "Nations are created gradually. I don't think the Palestinians are less of a nation than the Americans," he added.'

There is no intelligent person today who would compare like with unlike in this shallow way. Americans became a nation solely because they created, lived in and governed America. The Jews were the nation who created, lived in and governed Israel. The Arabs were among waves of colonisers who took their national homeland away from them. The Americans did not base their entire claim to nationhood on the big lie that they were the original inhabitants of the land. The Palestinian Arabs do just that.

'Palestinian identity is just so much gibberish. The official definition of that identity encompasses only those parts of the Palestine Mandate which Israel holds today.

'The people who live on the parts of the Palestine Mandate that were turned into the Kingdom of Jordan in 1921 are not Palestinians. There is no call to incorporate them into a Palestinian state. The people who lived in the parts of Israel that were captured by Jordan and Egypt in 1948 weren't Palestinians, and there was no call to turn the land that today comprises the so-called "Occupied Territories" into a state. But in 1967 when Israel liberated those areas-- only then did they magically turn into Palestinians. How is anyone supposed to take this nonsense seriously?

'Suppose I were to tell you that there were an ancient people known as the Floridians whose land was seized from them to make resort hotels and orange groves. What would be your first clue that there was something wrong here? Florida is a Spanish name meaning flower. Palestine, which is a Latin name applied by its ancient conquerors, derived from the Greek, has the same problem.

'When the Jews rebuilt their country, they did not call it Palestine, that was the name used by European powers. They called it Israel. The local Arabs who had come with the wave of conquests that toppled Byzantine rule had no such history and no name for themselves. Instead they took the Latin name used by the European powers and began pretending that it was some ancient tribal identity, rather than a regional name that was used by the European powers to describe local Jews and Arabs.

'... This bloody circus has been going on for way too long. Enough that the Arab states and the local clan leaders have managed to turn out generations of children committed to killing in the name of a mythical identity for a state that they don't really want. The call for a Palestinian state was a cynical ploy for destroying Israel. It's why the negotiations never go anywhere, they're not meant to go anywhere.'

Exactly. Which is why Gingrich's remark goes to the very heart of the issue; and it is the fact that so many in the intellectual, political and diplomatic world - including in Israel itself - find what he said so outlandish that goes a long way to explain why there is still no peace in the Middle East.

Gosh - a presidential candidate who actually understands what's going on in the Middle East and speaks the truth about it! No wonder they're so desperate now to stop him.

...and from Daniel Pipes' Blog, December 10, 2011:
The former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and current Republican presidential candidate said yesterday that "there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab people, and they had the chance to go many places."
Everyone from the PLO to a Mitt Romney spokesman jumped on Gingrich for this assertion, but he happens to be absolutely correct: no Arabic-speaking Muslims identified themselves as "Palestinian" until 1920, when, in rapid order this appellation and identity was adopted by the Muslim Arabs living in the British mandate of Palestine.
For details, see a long article of mine from 1989 on the topic or a short one from 2000. (December 10, 2011)

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Simon Deng, a former South Sudanese slave in Islamist Northern Sudan, gave the following speech at Durban Watch Conference in New York on Sept. 22nd. He passionately refuted the malicious ‘Zionism is Racism’ canard and pointed out that it is the Arab Islamists who have engaged in the ethnic cleansing of millions of Sudanese, both Muslim and Christian. He further notes that Israel is the ultimate destination of Sudanese refugees, not Egypt -who has attacked and oppressed them.Excerpts from Simon Deng's speech follow. Follow this link to see the full transcript.

...I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state – Israel. Hitler couldn’t have been made happier.The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.But friends, I come here today with a radical idea.

I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. ...By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan — Christians and Muslims alike — has been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them. and they are treated with a special privilege.Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan’s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a “tribal conflict.” It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well-known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans – Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is “Israeli crimes” and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.I don’t like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family’s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word “no.” All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it.

It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group — sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.

But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty-six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees’ only hope was to reach Israel’s side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is “heaven.”Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.So, yes … I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We – a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis — all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve-year-old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: “This is our people.” I was never able to find an answer to my question.On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel’s legitimacy.As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir — publicly stated that the South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built— not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth. Our truth.My Jewish friends taught me something I now want to say with you.AM Y’ISRAEL CHAI!The people of Israel lives!Thank you

Two Wikileaks cables from 2010 confirm with stunning accuracy the critique of Israel’s foreign-funded NGO movement that many have been making for years — and they do so from the mouths of the NGO leaders themselves. The cables summarize meetings between U.S. officials and leaders of the New Israel Fund, B’Tselem, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, called ACRI, a flagship NIF project.

In one cable, we learn that leaders of these groups have been telling U.S. officials the Israeli legal system is incapable of investigating claims against the Israeli government and military. In fact, Israel’s judiciary, both civil and military, is among the world’s most independent, and the former president of Israel’s High Court was cited by President Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Elena Kagan​, as a significant role model. Yet advancing claims of judicial indifference to war crimes has become a central ambition of the NGOs, because establishing Israel’s supposed inability to investigate itself would open the door to international prosecutions where verdicts against Israel are foreordained. The credible prospect of such prosecutions would paralyze the IDF — which is exactly the point:

Limor Yehuda of ACRI argued that military police investigations could not resolve the main issues of how Israel conducted the military operation [Operation Cast Lead​], including its targeting and policy decisions…she believed only international pressure could influence the GOI [Government of Israel] to create an independent investigation that could hold senior leadership accountable for alleged violations.

And here is Jessica Montell, the head of B’Tselem:

She wanted the highest level decision-makers held accountable for the decisions they made on how to prosecute the conflict, including Military Advocate General (MAG) Mandelblit…Her aim, she said, was to make Israel weigh world opinion and consider whether it could “afford another operation like this.”

What Montell means by that last sentence is frighteningly clear: she wants to create the conditions in which “world opinion” can prevent the IDF from defending Israelis from attack.
Then there is a cable about a draft Knesset bill (since extensively modified) that seeks greater transparency for foreign-funded NGOs:

Here Montell is giving credence to what B’Tselem’s critics, such as NGO Monitor, have been saying for years: that the group is essentially an arm of European foreign policy, more interested in condemning Israel than in promoting human rights.
And then there’s the bombshell:

New Israel Fund (NIF) Associate Director in Israel Hedva Radovanitz, who manages grants to 350 NGOs totaling about 18 million dollars per year, [said] that the campaign against the NGOs was due to the “disappearance of the political left wing” in Israel and the lack of domestic constituency for the NGOs. She noted that when she headed ACRI’s Tel Aviv office, ACRI had 5,000 members, while today it has less than 800, and it was only able to muster about 5,000 people to its December human rights march by relying on the active staff of the 120 NGOs that participated.She commented that she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic. [Emphasis added]

The reasoning behind NIF’s multi-million dollar donations to Arab groups such as Adalah and Mada al-Carmel that seek the destruction of Israel as a Jewish State suddenly becomes clear: In the words of a high-ranking NIF official, the group believes Zionism itself — that is, Jewish national self-determination — is anti-democratic and should eventually yield to an Arab state where Jews will once again live as a minority. It seems the “New Israel” envisioned by NIF will not be a Jewish state. Has NIF made this clear to its American [and Australian, UK, Canadian - SL] Jewish donors?
During the past decade, as the New Israel Fund and European governments have funded and fueled the delegitimization war on Israel, critics have argued the NGOs they support have no real constituency in Israel; that they represent foreign interests; that they are funded — all told, the sum is around $100 million per year — almost entirely by foreign foundations and European governments seeking to impose their agendas; that they seek to overturn the democratic choices of the Israeli people; that they foment external pressure and “lawfare” to prevent Israel from protecting herself from threats; and that the groups’ activism is motivated not by the claimed values of human rights and international law, but by varying degrees of anti-Zionism and solidarity with Arab interests and leftist anti-Israel activism.
At every turn, the NGOs have angrily denied these charges and smeared those who made them as being (take your pick) anti-peace, anti-human rights, anti-democracy, or extremist right-wingers attempting to silence dissent.
It is a remarkable moment in this battle to see the NGOs admit in private the same things they slander their critics for saying about them in public.
These revelations should encourage the Israeli government to finally make European funding of anti-Israel NGOs a major point of contention in bilateral relations, and they should encourage greater scrutiny of the New Israel Fund, a philanthropic giant that not only dispenses millions of dollars a year to anti-Israel groups, but creates and helps run the groups through its Shatil organization.
The pro-Israel community can expose the destructive ambitions of NIF and its European collaborators for an eternity. But ultimately, the ability of foreigners to wage a political war on Israel from within Israel’s borders will only be stopped when Israelis and their elected representatives recognize the seriousness of the problem and enact legislation to address it. America passed just such a law in 1938. It’s high time Israel followed suit.

The fact that NIF purports to be a Zionist organisation is effectively misleading and deceptive, despite the possibility that misinformed and/or misguided proponents of it sincerely believe that they are supporting the NIF’s stated principles.

NIF claims to be

“dedicated to a vision of Israel as … the Jewish homeland…” (We Are NIF)

“dedicated to the vision of the State of Israel as the sovereign expression of the right of self-determination of the Jewish people…” (New Israel Fund Principles)

NIF also claims that organizations that work “…to deny the right of the Jewish people to sovereign self-determination within Israel....” “… will not be eligible for NIF grants or support” (NIF Funding Guidelines).

Each of these principles is being violated as follows. (These are just a few examples.)

Drafted a 2007 “Democratic Constitution,” which calls for replacing the Jewish foundation of the state with a “democratic, bilingual and multicultural” framework. Jewish immigration would be permitted for “humanitarian reasons.”

Adalah officials, in conjunction with radical Palestinian NGO Al-Haq, wrote and edited large portions of a May 2009 pseudo-academic study that refers to “a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.” The report delegitimizes Israeli self-defense measures as “inhumane act[s] of apartheid...perpetrated in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.”

Participated in a May 2009 NGO “town hall meeting” in Geneva that helped shape the course of the UN’s Goldstone Mission. Adalah was subsequently cited 38 times in the Goldstone report.

In its lobbying in support of the Goldstone report and its recommendations, Adalah issued a press release urging governments to “re-evaluate their relationship with Israel.”

Submitted a legal opinion to a Spanish court in support of PCHR’s lawfare case against Israeli officials.

“collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah,” claiming that the “testimonies portray a…grim picture of questionable orders in many areas regarding Palestinian civilians [which] demonstrate the depth of corruption which is spreading in the Israeli military…Israeli society continues to turn a blind eye, and to deny that which happens in its name.”

was active in promoting “war crimes” charges against Israel after the Gaza fighting in January 2009. These charges were based on anonymous and unverifiable hearsay “testimonies.”

According to an analysis by Amos Harel in Ha’aretz: “Breaking the Silence...has a clear political agenda, and can no longer be classed as a ‘human rights organization.’ Any organization whose website includes the claim by members to expose the ‘corruption which permeates the military system’ is not a neutral observer. The organization has a clear agenda: to expose the consequences of IDF troops serving in the West Bank and Gaza. This seems more of interest to its members than seeking justice for specific injustices.” (July 17, 2009)

Although claiming to address Israeli society, the NGO’s lobbying and media advocacy focus on international audiences, including presentations in Europe and the United States. Yehuda Shaul, BtS co-founder, defended this practice: “Sometimes, when you want to deliver messages to the inside, you must go outside.”

BtS members and anti-Israel activists Yonatan and Itamar Shapira were on the “Jews for Justice for Palestinians” boat “Irene,” which sought to violate Israel’s security-based policies regarding naval traffic into Gaza (September 2010).

Conducts tours to Hebron and the South Hebron Hills to “witness first hand the dire situation.”Criticized by Israeli police officials for “antagoniz[ing]...settlers in the hope that the settlers will attack them.”

…main focus is political, and aims to delegitimize Israel on the basis of blanket charges of racism and other pejoratives. It often removes or minimizes the context of terrorism to demonize Israeli security measures.

Publishes an annual racism report (Hebrew) that alleges “incitement against Arab citizens” and “violat[ions of] the political freedom of Arab public leadership.” Examples include news articles claiming that “Hezbollah terrorists were supported by Israeli Arabs” (incitement), the indictment again MK Muhammad Barake for assaulting a police officer (violation of political freedom), and activities designed to “strengthen the Jewish character of Nazareth Ilit” (racist events by Jews towards Arab citizens).

Joined a coalition of NGOs in a letter to the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, calling “upon the Norwegian people to join us in our efforts and to stop investing in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.” The letter accused a number of Israeli and international corporations of “provid[ing] specifically designed equipment for the surveillance and repression of Palestinian population through restrictions of movement and collective punishments.”

Mossawa’s proposed constitution is based on the premise that “[t]he State of Israel was established on the ruins of the Palestinian people, for whom the event was a national tragedy – the Nakba.” The paper rejects Israel as a Jewish state and the “state symbols: for Jews only” (the flag and national anthem).

Mossawa publicized a protest vigil against “the occupation army which perpetrates cruel ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Mossawa also referred to Israel’s “harsh violations of international humanitarian law,” including “collective punishment,” and “consciously injuring innocent civilians.”

“Conduct[s] daily observations of IDF checkpoints in the West Bank, along the separation fence and in the seamline zone.” Reports, photos, and videos are published in Hebrew and English, employing emotive and politically charged language that contributes to the demonization of Israel.

Frequently interferes with and provokes IDF soldiers. A YouTube video shows activists harassing a soldier at a checkpoint, haranguing him for engaging in “apartheid.”

An exhibition of photos taken at Israeli checkpoints refers to the “policy of suppression and dehumanization that pervades the nature of control over another nation,” “collective punishment,” and “apartheid roads.” Machsom Watch also claims that the delay in checking documents at checkpoints is aimed at imposing “an illegal means of ‘educational punishment’.”

Monday, December 12, 2011

Update, 14 December 2011: JIW NOTES THAT IT IS NOT AWARE OF ANY REASON TO INFER THAT THE PERSON NAMED YAHAYA IBRAHIM WHO IS THE EDITOR OF INSPIRE MAGAZINE IS THE SAME PERSON AS THE PERSON WITH THAT NAME, WHO IS VISITING CHAPLAIN OF CURTIN UNIVERSITY IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

In a lead article in the seventh issue of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire magazine, titled "The Greatest Special Operation Of all time: The Expeditions Of Washington D.C. And New York," magazine editor-in-chief Yahya Ibrahim sets out the reasons behind the 9/11 attacks and the consequences of the attacks for the U.S.

Yahya says that the 9/11 attacks were catalyzed by decades of American aggression [against Muslims], and by U.S. support for the state of Israel – support, he said, that is the main reason behind the continued Israeli occupation of the Holy Land. He enumerates further reasons for the 9/11 attacks: the U.S. attack and subsequent embargo of Iraq in the first Gulf War, which led to the deaths of over a million and a half Iraqis; the desecration of the Arabian Peninsula by its stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia; and U.S. support for authoritarian regimes [in the Arab world].

Yahya refers to the massive losses of life and financial loss that the U.S. suffered as a direct result of 9/11, and as a result of the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He notes, citing Prof. Linda Bilmes from the Harvard Kennedy School, that these wars have cost the U.S. between four and six trillion dollars.

Referring to the West's double standard in preaching values of equality, freedom and human rights while doing the opposite in its dealing with Muslims, Yahya says that "9/11 did what was impossible for our words to do. It showed the world reality and exposed the West for what it really is." He mentions as examples the PATRIOT Act and the unfair treatment of Muslims in America following 9/11.

Yahya writes that 9/11 reaped numerous other victories as well, in addition to these losses in life and money, such as increased security measures – and inconvenience – at American airports. These measures, he said, were introduced following the operation by Umar Farouk [Abdulmutallab, the failed Christmas Day 2009 bomber]and the parcel bomb plot.

Yahya adds that 9/11 exposed the myth of the so-called Western intelligence services, showing that not only were they not omnipotent but that they were impotent. He added: "Such a huge special operation was hatched under the noses of the intelligence services, and yet they failed to get a whiff of it. The spooks were taken by surprise."

Yahya concludes by saying that for the AQAP, the U.S.'s collapse was only a matter of time. He added, "The question is not whether America will fall. America is already falling; it just has not yet hit the ground."

Follow this link or this one to subscribe to MEMRI or to order a copy of the full report.

From HonestReporting, December 8, 2011, by Simon Plosker:

Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com, flickr/Samuel M. Livingston.

... an academic study published in the Journal of Applied Business Research has found that Reuters coverage of the Middle East conflict is systematically tainted by propaganda and influences readers to side with the Palestinians and Arab states against Israel.
Henry Silverman writes on PR Web:

Researcher Henry Silverman of Roosevelt University analyzed a sample of fifty news-oriented articles published on the Reuters.com websites for the use of classic propaganda techniques, logical fallacies and violations of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, a manual of guiding ethical principles for the company’s journalists. Across the articles, over 1,100 occurrences of propaganda, fallacies and handbook violations in 41 categories were identified and classified.

In the second part of the study, a group of thirty-three university students were surveyed, before and after reading the articles, to assess their attitudes and motivation to support one or the other belligerent parties in the Middle East conflict, i.e., the Palestinians/Arabs or the Israelis. The study found that on average, subject sentiment shifted significantly following the readings in favor of the Arabs and that this shift was associated with particular propaganda techniques and logical fallacies appearing in the stories.

“Governments have long used propaganda to whip up public support during wartime and to demonize enemies”, says Silverman. “Reuters is adopting these same techniques to covertly shape audience perceptions and opinion in violation of its corporate governance charter.” Silverman points out that this is particularly troubling since “the news agency promotes itself as a paragon of accurate and impartial reporting and its stories are read by millions of people who are led to believe they are being provided objective facts”.

We are not surprised at these findings and await a response from Reuters with interest. After all, it isn’t our standards that Reuters are violating – it is their own journalistic code.
Reuters operates in over 200 cities in 94 countries in about 20 languages, and is picked up by many media outlets for foreign news stories. For such an organization to be producing anti-Israel propaganda on a global scale is extremely serious.You can read the full study here (PDF)...

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